Hi all,
I just wanted to conduct an informal poll about the "auto-hide the menubar" feature in TRS19. Please understand that this poll refers to the new Driver menu layout, and not Surveyor or other locations in the game.
My feeling that this setting has outlived its usefulness. My reasoning is as follows:
* The auto-hide mechanism allowed the game to hide the menu bar when the user was not actively interacting it (determined by whether the mouse cursor was placed near the top of the screen). This was definitely not to everybody's taste, but for some people it meant that you could reclaim the portion of your screen that was otherwise entire blocked out by the menu bar, which was fully opaque and which wasn't particularly relevant most of the time.
* In TRS19, the Driver menus no longer reside on an opaque bar, so a lot of the rationale for autohiding is gone.
* Additionally, some gameplay-relevant features (score, clock, etc.) go away along with the menu icons.
* Some other elements in the same are (eg. objectives) stick around, leaving a (imo) fairly disjoint user experience.
* The menus are now more useful, but simultaneously less intrusive than they used to be.
* While the ability to hide the whole UI is not new, it's now more prominent and (to me, at least) seems more likely useful than hiding a relatively small part of the UI.
Let me know your thoughts. Do you use the auto-hide feature? If so, do you find it useful in Driver, or are you only using it for Surveyor? If you're using it for Surveyor, do you care about the fact that it also affects Driver?
thanks,
chris
I just wanted to conduct an informal poll about the "auto-hide the menubar" feature in TRS19. Please understand that this poll refers to the new Driver menu layout, and not Surveyor or other locations in the game.
My feeling that this setting has outlived its usefulness. My reasoning is as follows:
* The auto-hide mechanism allowed the game to hide the menu bar when the user was not actively interacting it (determined by whether the mouse cursor was placed near the top of the screen). This was definitely not to everybody's taste, but for some people it meant that you could reclaim the portion of your screen that was otherwise entire blocked out by the menu bar, which was fully opaque and which wasn't particularly relevant most of the time.
* In TRS19, the Driver menus no longer reside on an opaque bar, so a lot of the rationale for autohiding is gone.
* Additionally, some gameplay-relevant features (score, clock, etc.) go away along with the menu icons.
* Some other elements in the same are (eg. objectives) stick around, leaving a (imo) fairly disjoint user experience.
* The menus are now more useful, but simultaneously less intrusive than they used to be.
* While the ability to hide the whole UI is not new, it's now more prominent and (to me, at least) seems more likely useful than hiding a relatively small part of the UI.
Let me know your thoughts. Do you use the auto-hide feature? If so, do you find it useful in Driver, or are you only using it for Surveyor? If you're using it for Surveyor, do you care about the fact that it also affects Driver?
thanks,
chris